Ken Stewart shows how GISS adjusts temperature records in two adjacent sites in Australia
This issue was also recently covered on the Climategate blog here
Introduction
Despite its assurances, GISS has adjusted the temperature records of two sites at Mackay to reverse a cooling trend in one and increase a warming trend in another. This study presents evidence that this is not supportable and is in fact an instance of manipulation of data.
I decided to have a look at the temperature records of the weather stations closest to where I live, near Mackay in North Queensland. The Bureau of Meteorology lists 3 current stations: Mackay MO, Mackay Aero, and Te Kowai Exp Station, plus the closed station Mackay Post Office. GISS has a list of nearby stations. One is “Mackay Sugar Mill Station”. I had never heard of it. Te Kowai Exp Station, only a few kilometres from Mackay, is in fact at the same co-ordinates as Mackay Sugar Mill. I checked on AIS for the GHCN site, and there is Mackay Sugar Mill on the map. The co-ordinates given by GHCN put it in the middle of a cane paddock 600m to the south of Te Kowai Sugar Experiment Station, so that’s definitely it! (If not, it’s identical in every other way!) And that is the closest weather station to my home, so I became even more interested.
Te Kowai is an experimental farm for developing new varieties of sugar cane, run by scientists and technicians since 1889. It has a temperature record of over 100 years with only a couple of gaps. So in fact it’s an ideal rural station for referencing a nearby urban station, as it should have a similar climate.
Analysis
I plotted data from BOM for maxima and minima and obtained the means for Te Kowai, all Mackay city stations, all GHCN stations in our 5 x 5 grid, and several other towns and cities with long records (Te Kowai’s starts at 1908). This is because “ In our analysis, we can only use stations with reasonably long, consistently measured time records.”
GISS combines GHCN data from all urban stations at the same location, and then homogenises this with data from neighbouring rural stations. So I then plotted the same-location data and the post-homogenisation data.
A problem that appeared immediately is that the GISS annual mean runs from December to November, while BOM’s raw data is for calendar years. Most of the time it matches pretty well, but there are several examples of poor quality data. Another problem is that BOM does not compute a mean for any year with even one month of data missing, while GISS tolerates several missing months.
Here are graphs of the results.
Read his entire post here
http://comixed.com/2010/01/04/comics-comic-strip-yonkoma-the-science-is-settled/
Haven’t seen this comic linked yet — sorry if it’s a repeat 🙂
TerryBixler (07:17:53):
“Has anyone noticed the huge deficits, has anyone ever wondered where the money is going while there is around 10% of the population still unemployed. Have these numbers been adjusted as well?”
The numbers aren’t adjusted, just cherry-picked. Since 0bama became president, unemployment has increased substantially. U-6 unemployment, which includes those who can’t find work and who have stopped looking, has risen to well over 17%. The media only reports U-1 unemployment, which only includes those whose unemployment payments haven’t run out.
UK Now on WMD inquiry Number 3
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7023520.ece
For those who are not familiar with the saga of WMD in the UK, the public were lied to about the “unequivocal evidence” and real and imminent threat of WMD, and that is what convinced most people who supported the war against Saddam to assent to the war.
It was then found that the evidence had been “sexed” up in the “dodgy dossier”, and we’ve since had a string of inquiries each failing to convince the public that they were serious.
On Weather of Mass Destruction (the use of ordinary destructive weather events to terrorise the public to believe global warming), we’ve had an internal review by Muir Russell, the UK parliament is holding an inquiry, now the University is asking in academics. Outside the UK, there’s been the inquiry in Penn University, and no doubt there are more going on/planned.
Now where can we find a dodgy dossier which has been sexed up to suggest the evidence was unequivocal, real and imminent … any ideas?
Dave Ward:- They can announce what they like but if the premise is flawed as it seems to be then it means less than nothing. Can they provide proof of what they are postulating besides the projections of computer models?
I will answer that myself and that is no. The theory of global warming via CO2 is just that and remains unproved and untestable.
If we keep searching long enough, we’ll find the one thermometer that all fill-in and homogenization data comes from, located in Jim Hansen’s back yard.
Dr. Gerhard Loebert (06:44:37) said:
“o There is no direct connection between CO2 emission and climate warming. This is shown by the fact that these two physical quantities have displayed an entirely different time behaviour in the past 150 years. Whereas the mean global temperature varied in a quasi-periodic manner (mean period = 70 years), with temperature maxima in 1870, 1940 and 2006, (see Fig. 2.1 of http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e03.htm) the CO2 concentration – after having essentially remained constant for centuries – increased exponentially with the onset of massive hydrocarbon burning in the1950’s.”
I can’t say much about his post, not having studied that subject, but I keep wondering if the increase in CO2 is exclusively due to the increase in hydrocarbon burning – or if this is a coincidence which has been accepted because it fits the ‘A’-bit of perceived GW.
How do we know if this doesn’t show the CO2 increase following the MWP, lagging the then temperature rise by ca 800 years, which has been observed in ice core data of previous ice age/interglacial periods?
I find this really puzzling – any explanations gratefully received!
Viv Evans (08:17:26):
“How do we know if this doesn’t show the CO2 increase following the MWP, lagging the then temperature rise by ca 800 years, which has been observed in ice core data of previous ice age/interglacial periods?
“I find this really puzzling – any explanations gratefully received!”
The planet naturally emits CO2: click
Those are the IPCC’s own figures. As we can see, for every 34 CO2 molecules emitted, only one comes from human activity. The other 33 come from natural processes, such as decaying vegetation, termite emissions, etc.
Human CO2 emissions could double, or cease entirely, and the difference would have no significance.
Further to my (and other) posts re the UEA’s independent review, Bishop Hill has more:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/11/russell-review-under-way.html
For the “correlation is not causation” file?
“NYT: THE BLIZZARDS ARE FROM THE WARMING…”
New York Times ad outlook dim, shares fall
Viv Evans, in the early days of Climate “science” when they augured the Camp Century ice, they thought they found a periodicity (I think it was 80 and 150 years).
Using that periodicity, we got the first prediction: GLOBAL COOLING, and that was seriously being considered in the early 1970s. And although it was the “orthodoxy” as global warming is now, it was behind all the cooling scares and e.g. the setting up of climatic research institutions.
But …. it didn’t cool, so some enterprising researchers in the 1970s decided to explain the FAILURE of the camp century cycle predictions by ADDING to this effect the CO2 warming. (see first paper on “global warming” Broecker published a paper entitled: “Climate Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” or http://www.climatemice.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Comment.GlobalWarmingInventedByGlobalCoolers)
And, coincidentally, for the next two decades it warmed, and those who had dreamt up the idea gained a lot of credibility for their marvellous ability to predict two decades.
But, in reality, everything we see in the climate signal can be explained as pure and simple noise. The fact is that the climate has long term variation that is much bigger than short term variations, so it has long term upward/downward “thrusts” (trends) which are pure noise but which will appear to many people to be a some kind of “thing” happening. If you get a series of natural ups interspersed with downs the result is that the signal will look as if there is some kind of cycle, but follow it back or wait for it to recur and it will disappear into the noise it is.
Identical to the NIWA alterations. Likely a conspiracy.
dave ward (05:31:17) :
Somewhat O/T, but the UEA have just announced a “New scientific assessment of climatic research publications” in a further attempt “to win back the hearts and minds of the public on the issue of climate change”
It’s big news but I’m not so cynical. They can’t do anything without including the bloggers.
“Scandal university climate science to be probed,”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7023520.ece
This post clearly demonstrates the fact that the GIStemp analysis produces garbage.
I feel sorry for the guys at Clear Climate Code. Their porting of the software to Python, while noble, will produce the same nonsensical results. If only they could free themselves from Reto Ruedy’s tractor beam.
Data In, Garbage Out. It’s the GISS way.
Anthony, this is way off topic, but given your interest in solar power, etc. I thought you’d like to see this. And I don’t know of any other way to contact you. This sounds like a game changer for small installations on homes etc., where solar is a reasonable alternative.
From:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10451641-54.html
IBM researchers are developing a solar cell with an eye towards what’s in the ground.
Researchers on Wednesday published a technical paper in the journal Advanced Materials that describes a solar cell made of abundant materials with relatively high efficiency. The cell can convert 9.6 percent of solar energy into electrical energy, a 40 percent boost over current methods.
That level of efficiency is already far exceeded in commercial silicon-based cells and even beat by thin-film solar cells, which are cheaper to make than silicon cells but are less efficient. But IBM researchers set out to make a cell that uses materials that are relatively abundant elements–copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur, or selenium (CZTS). The availability of materials for existing solar technologies limits their long-term potential, according to IBM.
Great work Ken, 2 boots on the ground are worth a hundred on desks 6,000 miles away.
More evidence of man made (hansenized) global warming.
Fascinating comment Dr. Loebert
Here’s a link to a study done in 2003 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations titled Climate change and long-term fluctuations of commercial catches — The possibility of forecasting; ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/
Conclusions are in the y2787e10.pdf but an interesting chart appears on page 50 ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf which shows a 55 year oscillation of the atmospheric circulation index and temperature range. Page 51 indicates the global temperature anomaly related to “Global Warming” concerns.
This is from the ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf document:
Figure 9.1 shows the results of modelling the detrended global dT and zonal ACI based on a 55-year period of climate oscillations. The figures indicate that a harmonic with this period length is in good agreement with the past oscillations of both dT and ACI, and suggest that similar cyclic changes are likely to continue during the future 30–60 years.
Figure 9.2 shows the temperature dynamics reconstructed from the Greenland ice cores data for the last 400 years combined with the detrended dT dynamics, calculated from the time series of directly measured temperature for the last 150 years (Figure 9.3). It is clear that the dynamics of the measured temperatures for 1861–1975 coincide with the reconstructed Ice Core dT dynamics. With a 55-year period length, the projected model curve is in good agreement with the observed fluctuations of both reconstructed and measured dT.
Thank you dearly whoever it was above that led me to this site and its follow ups http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate
It sounds good to me – but is it? If I can believe it then I can forget about climate change and go back to trying to educate so called bankers as to what they have done wrong that assured a banking collapse and which they have not yet grasped and changed. The author of the original paper has been around for some years. Why haven’t I heard of his theory till now?
One thing with all the temp adjustments and thermometer movement, they must know that this can only bring a decade of so of warming charts – after that it will normalize at the ‘higher’ levels. I guess they are only looking for a 10 year run and then move to another impending catastrophe.
Ken Harvey, does a Crookes radiometer rotate with white or black surface forward? The theory says that black emits, so … or is it that black absorbs … or is it that black gets hotter so the few molecules bounce off with more energy.
The only thing I can remember is that when I tried to predict the direction using what seemed an “obvioius” theory, it proved to be wrong and after a bit of thought I realised that there were other possible explanations.
That’s why in real science, you make predictions, and then you validate the science against those predicitions. Like e.g. if you predict in the dodgy dossier of 2001 that the world will warm by 1.4-5.8C/century and you know that long term noise is greater than short term (i.e. short term easier to predict), if the world doesn’t heat up at all but cools, at a rate of -0.8C/century
… you shut up, go away and think where you got the science wrong!
That’s the marvellous thing about science – it is based on what happens, on the evidence not on wild speculation of the dodgy dossier nor opinion polls of scientists.
The fact that GISS make the past cooler, suggests to me they are avoiding making the present warming trend steeper, so their results still match UAH MSU data reasonably well. So instead they cool he past where we have limited methods of checking the work, this to me alone is an admission of guilt!
Smokey (08:29:59) :
Viv Evans (08:17:26):
I can understand Viv’s question, if the climate was very warm 800 years ago, wouldn’t we be seeing CO2 rising in response to it as shown by the Ice Cores?
Smokey (08:29:59) :
Viv Evans (08:17:26):
I should have said CO2 rising now 800 years later.
On a related issue, is the global CO2 ever going to change from 388.09 ppm ?
It seems to have been stuck on that number for a long time; I would think even the natural unman induced increase, would have raised it by now.
Maybe the gizmo need to be tapped on the dial to unstick the needle.
As I understand it, most anthropogenic CO2 occurs as a consequence of some sort of heat generating activity – e.g. coal, oil and gas burning for heat, propulsion and electrical generation, as a by product of biological activity (food converted to energy to warn and power living beings with CO2 given off). I have never seen any discussion of whether the quantity of heat produced is significant in the context of global temperature.
For example, I think the average human alone gives of about 60 to 100 watts, so for a 7 billion population we are talking about 420 to 700GW. I have no idea where to start calculating heat output from transportation, industry and power stations, let alone cooking fires.
All told that’s a lot of extra heat energy given a doubling of world population in the last 50 years.